swag

soooo … I have been doing a Blog Block Party with RRBC (Rave Reviews Book Club)… great post by bloggers, authors, and all manner of peeps… and I wanted to offer something new as a prize this time… over course I have some of my bracelets and earrings to pick from, but I wanted to add some new fun swag…

I broke out my tools, added some keychain rings and some chain…. and wha-la…

so far I have five keychains with various charms… I just need to add sayings in the bottle cap charms…

so that has been my art project this month… if you guys want a chance to win a keychain or bracelet/earrings, I am scheduled as one of the stops on the RRBC block party on the 29th, over at my book blog Finder’s Keepers Series … I will have a character interview with Marin from my Finder’s Keepers Series… Makayla (also from the books) did an interview on the 5th over on my author site Finder’s Keepers – Author Tracey Clark …

but I’m not the only one will cool prizes and posts… check out the RRBC Block Party line up… there are stops every day this month… alright guys… that’s all for now…

booklets are easy but time consuming… and a bugger to figure out the first time… so here is a cheat sheet for your first… 😛

you need a printer, some printer paper, staples, and a paper cutter…

you need to have your paper turned to the landscape view, and the first time around, set your desired margins and grid… (two rows and four columns) put the first chapter (maybe first two chapters) teasers, author bio, cover, buy & author links, etc… and print out your four pages (front and back printing)… this is not your booklet… this cheat sheet shows you what info/wordage goes in each cell ….

next you put use this guide to put what goes in cell one, in one… in cell 20, in 20… etc… (on the computer you have four pages in landscape mode, but use two-sided printing so you end up with two pages)

28 : 5 / 26 : 7

32 : 1 / 30 : 3

back of page (pg 2 in computer)

8 : 25 / 6 : 27

4 : 29 / 2 : 31

this is the front and back view of the first page… once you use your paper cutter you have four pages of your booklet… you can either but the cover in cell one *(1) or just start out with your chapter … and print out covers later… if you choose to do the covers later, then you have …

back pg / cover / back pg / cover

back pg / cover / back pg / cover

instead of numbers, you follow the back pg/cover method… otherwise your cover is in cell one and the back pg is in the last cell…

and this is the front and back of the second page… or page three and four on the computer before printing…

16 : 17 / 14 : 19

12 : 21 / 10 : 23

on back (*pg 4 on computer)

20 : 13 / 18 : 15

24 : 9 / 22 : 11

make sure to print out and save your cheat sheet… the one with the cells numbered 1, 2, 3, 4, etc… so that you can easily check to see if you have the correct info in your cell… otherwise, just cut and paste from your saved cheat sheet to your booklet… good luck and happy wordage, tracey

Like this:

I love for my beads to have that marbled look… it opens up the possibilities to mix them with both light and dark colors… each bracelet I make has some element that speaks to me… if it looks cheap or boring to me, why in the heck would I expect someone to buy it… I wouldn’t… and if I wont wear it, and no one else is picking up for a gift or for themselves, then I am just wasting my time…

always makes something that you love… I know that everyone has differing likes and dislikes, but I can only make what appeals to me on some level… it’s like a chef… if they love food, they want it to taste delicious, and their best dish will be something they have been making over and over again for themselves… know what you like, try to branch out, and always try new things… in the end you will make something that you and everyone else will love…

keep it simple, mix and match, add some connector and decorative items… playing with your beads can be stressful or soothing, hopefully more soothing than anything else… make sure you have enough light to work by, cause low lighting makes those tiny holes a pain in the arse to get your elastic string through…

I am the author of the Finder’s Keepers series… I have one book out and a second in the final edits stage… woowho… Southern Discoveries (Finder’s Keepers: book 2) has an awesome cover that I am waiting to reveal until next month… Finder’s Keepers is a paranormal/fantasy romance series… I also have a contemporary romance that will come out later this year, Skymann series… book one is tentatively titled Artistic Beauty …

My arts and crafts do more than just relieve my downtime… I like to create my own swag… instead of ordering bookmarks and such, I like to try to make them… I’m sure there will be somethings that will be beyond me (like those huge banners… lol… I wouldn’t even know where to start…)… but bracelets and pendants, booklets and bookmarks… those I can do…

necklace

Drop in from time to time, to see what I come up with…. not all of my art is for swag bags and selling at the author table… some will be just for me… and frankly hard to transport!!!

I got bored and decided that I needed a tree on my wall… I swear I will finish it someday soon… I have a number of art projects to beef up my swag scheduled for next month… hopefully I will have the time to share some of the projects with you, starting with the various bracelets mom and I have been working on…

I also hope to make key chains, necklaces, and maybe a few bookmarks and booklets… what crafts do you guys have planned???

this is the last piece I did for my publisher, Mary Smith, over at Gone Writing Publishing, for her give-away boxes… there were a lot of fun…

book/ escaping stories

As you can see, by adding a little more to it, the painting started to look even better… that is what I love about oil paints… you can work on them, continue adding to them, for days… the fact that paint takes so long to dry can be annoying when you want to finish quickly, but it is worth it… you just keep working until you like what you see… and if you decide that you hate the entire thing, you just have to break out the white paint… muahaha

then you have a blank canvas to start over with, and no wasted material… oil paints are very forgiving… they allow you to work until everything is perfect… TRACEY CLARK

This is another of the paintings I did for my publishers give-away boxes… a book flower… this isn’t the finished piece but I forgot to take a picture before I sent Mary the three paintings… this is close to the finished look… the only thing I added was a bookmark with Shocking Finds written on it, falling from the middle of the book flower… and few books shooting off with the leaves like flower buds, and showing the name of my fellow authors and their book titles, those of use at Gone Writing Publishing… cute but I still love the painting of the flower shooting up out of an open book better… 😛

I added some different shades to the flower book pages, and placed some lovely book buds… the finished outcome that I forgot to take a picture of had the writing on the bookmark and the book buds… for that I tried to used a paint pen… next time I will just use a paintbrush… a paint pen is great for tacking you name to your work, but I needed something with a finer tip in order to write on the books… and if there is a finer tipped paint pen out there, I haven’t found it yet… TRACEY CLARK

a booklet is like to wonderful artistic activities coming together and having a baby… lol… I love these little things

so far I have made 150 of the little things… they hold the first two chapters of my novel, Shocking Finds and a few excerpts… there is the cover picture, my author photo, and the blurb… and if that isn’t enough, they also house my book and author links… that is a lot of info to cram into nine small pieces of paper – no more than a quarter of a sheet… you can send off to have someone else do all the work for you, but I love tackling new art projects…

I need at least 250 swag gifts for the Rebels and Readers book signing in November… and that is just the swag I needed to donate to the free goodie bags… getting your swag ready for one of these events is a job all on its own… but I don’t want to just make booklets… I already have some bookmarks and bookmark ideas, and maybe some bracelets… and recently I have been thinking about making keychains or charms… and best of all, Clark jr bars, with a sticker on the back showing one of my novels… man, I have never loved my last name more… lol… 😛

I know this isn’t the third week (Friday) of the month, but I thought I would start things off with one of my favorite paintings… get the ball rolling while we wait for the third Friday to roll around… I forgot to take a picture of the finished look… just imagine some darker book pages on top of the flower roots…

Because that is what this is… a flower growing out of the pages of a book… when I first started this painting I didn’t think I would like what I found after the last brush stroke… but I continued to come back, adding more strokes, more color, more definition… and each time the painting grew… when I finally came into my office to work on it that last day, I just knew that one more brush stroke would ruin it all…

that has happened to me a lot… when that happens, there is nothing to do but pull out the white paint and start from scratch… and man does that hurt… but if you keep trying to fix the flaws you see, you end up with a final result that you will never be happy with…

but this painting is my favorite for a lot of reasons… and not just because I love the final look… this painting is about hope to me… about learning to fly… when you see a baby bird falling from the sky, the feathers sooo brand new, it is hard to imagine that the little guy will move in just the right way, soring back into the air…

this painting is about my writing, my MS, about life… it isn’t this moment that defines us… it is the next and the next… all we need is that one final brush stroke and we will finally be where we were meant to be… we will learn to fly… (and if we fall on our face, we can white out the board and start over) Happy wordage everyone… Tracey Clark

art project

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